Citation for the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Rowan Williams

by Provost-Designate Dr. Andy Orchard

(Prof. Andy Orchard, director of the Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Toronto, will assume his duties as Trinity College's 14th Provost in July. For the past several years, he has been the College's Public Orator. In this role, he delivers, in Latin, citations for the College's honorary degree recipients. The following is his citation for the Archbishop, which he read in Latin, Welsh and Old English.)

Most honourable President and Provost, and all the University, I present to you the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Rowan Douglas Williams, 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a prelate, a professor, a pastor, a poet. And a Welshman.

About him as a poet I should say, just as the venerable Welsh poet Aneirin said in the ancient heroic poem Y Gododdin:

     The poets of the world will be judges of men of compassion.

Likewise, about him as a pastor I should say, just as the Venerable Bede, a reverend doctor most like our doctor in honor and in wisdom and learning, said in heroic measures about Saint Cuthbert:

So, having attained the highest summits of the priesthood,
Cuthbert shone with mind, with might, brilliant with mouth,
he looked after the flocks entrusted to him with prayers and advice.

Likewise, about him as a professor I should say, just as the venerable Alcuin said about Ælberht, his teacher:

A man good and just, generous, pious and kind,
a fosterer, teacher, and supporter of a catholic faith,
a leader, doctor, defender, and a student of the Church,
encouraging justice, proclaiming law, preaching salvation,
wise in mind and witty in word and firm in action;
the more he piled up a mass of accumulated honour,
the more his heart checked itself in humble piety.

Finally, and in English, I should likewise say of him as a heroic prelate steering the Anglican Communion in heroic times, following the heroic verses of the ancient poem Beowulf:

You are strong in might and wise in spirit,
clever in the way of words.

I know this man to be a fit and proper person in his wisdom and his ways to be admitted to the degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa.